Karapatan Monitor for Begining of 2013 is Out

A graphic from the Karapatan Monitor.

The latest issue of Karapatan Monitor, for the months of January through April, is out now. The human rights alliance Karapatan publishes the Monitor multiple times a year to review the state of human rights in the Philippines:

Months into the end of Oplan Bayanihan’s Phase 1, hum rights violations continue to belie the conjured picture of “peace and development” of the three-year US-Noynoy Aquino regime. Oplan Bayanihan (OpBay) is Aquino’s version of Oplan Bantaya Laya (OBL).

Gross violations of people’s rights are committed amid the intolerable conditions of poverty and exploitation, made worse since the early 1990s by neoliberal globalization policies. The economy is characterized by unhampered plunder of the country’s land and resources by the US and other foreign-owned big business, the decreasing budget for social services (health, education and housing), the Private-Public Partnership (PPP) scheme and the rampant corruption involving public funds. The macro-economic statistics on the supposed economic growth under Noynoy Aquino are utterly deceptive and preposterous for the majority of Filipinos as they sink deeper into impoverishment.